This review contains no spoilers.
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Juan Ferreyra
Summary
Oliver Queen begins to unravel the mystery of the Ninth Circle while Black Canary and John Diggle try to find out what happened to their friend.
Positives
Juan Ferreyra’s cover is pretty cool. I love how much green there is for obvious reasons. I do think that the money is a pretty nice touch. Everything around Oliver including his city and money is crumbling around him. I like it.
Ferreyra takes over on the art from Otto Schmidt and does a sensational job. The art is spectacular on every page. The level of detail and the amazing colors are incredible to look at. Ferreyra brings a dynamic sense of life and movement in this issue and I was really impressed throughout.
The designs of the new villains, the Ninth Circle, are efficiently creepy and weird. Benjamin Percy seems to like to infuse a somewhat morbid tone and style into his Green Arrow stories and Ferreyra fits that perfectly with his art style.
I like that Diggle gets to be his own man. On the TV show, Diggle pretty much lives for Oliver’s command. He never has that many aspirations of his own and mainly follows Ollie blindly. Here, we see that Diggle was able to make a life for himself that has worked out pretty well for him. I like that. He doesn’t need Oliver.
Oliver has to break into a building in this and it was really fun watching him use strategy and intelligence to do it. Percy does a great job of establishing how Ollie thinks and operates in his own head.
Negatives
I don’t buy the excuse for why Shado is working for the Ninth. Hopefully, there is something more going on because I don’t believe she would be doing what she is doing given her history with Ollie in the New 52 timeline. I get that honor is important to her but this is ridiculous.
The reveal of who the Ninth Circle is, unfortunately, is too on the nose. It’s such an obvious way to go that isn’t fun or interesting. It feels like more of a cliche than anything else.
Like in the last issue, not enough happens here. It feels like the plot is being padded and dragged out. It needs to move at a faster pace in my opinion.
Verdict
Overall, I thought this was a boring issue. Nothing really happens in the book that engages me. There’s some cool action and decent scenes but, plot wise, this did nothing for me. However, Ferreyra’s art is absolutely outstanding and worth seeing. I would recommend waiting for the trade on this issue.
